The shipwreck of grieving

Enduring loss: Love letters to my mom

There are days when my grief is too big for the house to contain. So I rush outside before grief expands, and I try to cast it away into the dome of the sky.

Last Monday was one of those days, when I felt like the house was strangling me. I raced to get outside. We’d had a storm, and I stepped into fresh snow and a world that had gone all white. Ten inches of wet snow smoothed the landscape, cloaked the trees, and softened hard edges. The mountains were invisible; fog silvered the middle distance.

Snow fell and I reveled in the fast, fat white flakes. I’m a Bay Area girl, new to living in snow; I still think it’s magic. Once outside, I crunched and scrunched down the road and across paths and lawns ; I kicked white gouts of powder in front of me, made funny footprints, hurled snowballs that flew apart into sprays of crystals. I laughed. And then I started to cry.

One of the curious things about grief is how closely joy and sadness are entwined. Tears often follow moments of happiness, as if joy opens a valve to a spillway and grief gouts out, rolling in sticky tears over my face.

Water through snow, with green. Grief flows like water, surging against ice and earth.

I wandered for hours in the storm, snapped pictures while tears soaked my face (it’s a wonder they didn’t freeze!). Sometimes I bawled my head off in the silent isolation of the storm. And at some point during my long hike, I thought, these pictures will be love letter to my mom.

The images in this post are things I want to share with her, pictures that would make her laugh, or say “oh my.” I don’t know if the dead can see the internet, but Momma, if any part of you still drifts in the ether and can see into cyberspace, these are for you.

A portal of red dead trees looks out over a green pondA cheery snowman made me laugh through my tears.Garden ornament in the snow looks into the storm.Water at the spillway, waiting to rush into Angels Creek.

My mother’s favorite color was red. She would have loved this bird house, bright scarlet against green and white.

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The bird on this blog

My mother passed away in the last hours of 2016. Sometimes when life hurts too much, I need to write and share. This year, that's what I'm doing. I'm warning you, at least for the foreseeable future, this blog will be about loss and how to deal with it.

If you want happiness, painting tips, and pleasant nattering, visit my website, www.Margaretsloan.com. I promise, there won't be a lot of sadness there.